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crossatlant5's review
4.0
The ending of Nightwood is one of the most inexplicable I've ever encountered reading fiction. It is beautiful, horrible and miraculous all at once. Without giving anything away, it finally pulls the whole rambling mess of a book into focus.
This thing is positively jammed with thundering, epigrammatic sentences (the only thing I can think to compare it to is Cormac McCarthy's style in 'Blood Meridian,' but Barnes has a way defter, sensuous hand than McCarthy does). Barnes' figurative language and metaphors are second to none; still, her style is so dense and the structure is so rambling that it begins to wear on you after a while. The author drops so many gems on a page-by-page basis that the effect is kind of like being bludgeoned to death with metaphors. It's like you're being hacked apart by a group of guys with machetes, except the machetes are figurative language and you can't die.
Jumping from chapter to chapter is like slowing turning across the surface of a dark and flawed diamond, looking into the heart of its flaw carefully from every facet. It roars along in the first few chapters, drags horribly in the middle (in my opinion) and then comes thunderously to life again at the end. There's not much in the way of structure and there is a lot of stream-of-consciousness rambling from the doctor—this was what I resented the most. Still, his descriptions of gender dysphoria were gut-wrenching and fascinating given how old this book is. I realize that using the doctor's monologues to structure the book was a stylistic gambit, but it didn't pay off for me. Whenever Barnes is describing things from a third-person perspective, though, she's absolutely on fire.
This thing is positively jammed with thundering, epigrammatic sentences (the only thing I can think to compare it to is Cormac McCarthy's style in 'Blood Meridian,' but Barnes has a way defter, sensuous hand than McCarthy does). Barnes' figurative language and metaphors are second to none; still, her style is so dense and the structure is so rambling that it begins to wear on you after a while. The author drops so many gems on a page-by-page basis that the effect is kind of like being bludgeoned to death with metaphors. It's like you're being hacked apart by a group of guys with machetes, except the machetes are figurative language and you can't die.
Jumping from chapter to chapter is like slowing turning across the surface of a dark and flawed diamond, looking into the heart of its flaw carefully from every facet. It roars along in the first few chapters, drags horribly in the middle (in my opinion) and then comes thunderously to life again at the end. There's not much in the way of structure and there is a lot of stream-of-consciousness rambling from the doctor—this was what I resented the most. Still, his descriptions of gender dysphoria were gut-wrenching and fascinating given how old this book is. I realize that using the doctor's monologues to structure the book was a stylistic gambit, but it didn't pay off for me. Whenever Barnes is describing things from a third-person perspective, though, she's absolutely on fire.
jenniferlynnkrohn's review
2.0
This book is one that I simultaneously admire and dislike. I understand why so many people love it. Barnes explores the way that a person can be made into “the other,” when they are objectified. Her success in that exploration is the very reason that I didn't like the book. I was left wondering who the character of Robin Vote really was. The plot revolves around Robin’s lovers who lives she apparently destroyed, yet those lovers, both men and women, view her as an object. What really seems to destroy them is her refusal to fulfill the role that they have created for her. In fact, we only see Robin as others see her; we never get to see her as she sees herself. Barnes probably did this on purpose. By denying the reader the "real" Robin, Barnes forces the reader to deal with the often incomprehensible complexity that is an other human being. However, I wanted Robin to have a voice, to point out how her former lovers failed to understand her.
If my only complaint was that Barnes succeeded in an experimental novel that I simply didn't like, I would have given it a higher rating. However, sprinkled throughout the novel are moments of racism. Often the racism is from the characters’ dialogue, so it could be interpreted as another example of how these characters are objectifying people. Yet in the first chapter the racism is from the third person narrator, which lends it an uncomfortable authority that is never questioned in the book. While Barnes does a great job of exploring how people can be made “the other” and objectified, she seems unaware of when she is doing it herself.
If my only complaint was that Barnes succeeded in an experimental novel that I simply didn't like, I would have given it a higher rating. However, sprinkled throughout the novel are moments of racism. Often the racism is from the characters’ dialogue, so it could be interpreted as another example of how these characters are objectifying people. Yet in the first chapter the racism is from the third person narrator, which lends it an uncomfortable authority that is never questioned in the book. While Barnes does a great job of exploring how people can be made “the other” and objectified, she seems unaware of when she is doing it herself.
helmagnusdottir's review
1.0
I loathed this book. The extremely long speeches by Matthew were right up there with the lack of plot, any likable characters, or real point. I had to read this for a book club or I would have thrown it into the garbage. I had heard good things, and I was horribly disappointed. Ugh. At least it's done.
quadruploni's review
I have wanted to read this ever since I met an old bookseller friend of my father's wife in a Parisian café that apparently shows up often in the novel, and I am likely to return to it at some point, but in my first attempt I found the prose style so tight I felt constricted, the characters unmemorable and hard to keep track of. I assumed that characters were not that important a convention in the novel, but wasn't interested at the time in finding what was important in it.
blankgarden's review
4.0
4,5 stars. My review: https://theblankgarden.com/2014/01/24/until-the-fury-of-the-night-rots-out-its-fire/
darwin8u's review
5.0
“The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.”
- Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
I listened to this novel one night as I drove from Phoenix to Las Vegas. It was ominously dark, beautiful and creepy. I guess that equally applies to the book as to the drive. Art exists when something can be both creepy and beautiful at the same time. This isn't David Lynch, but I can imagine few other directors directing this book into a movie. Nightwood also gave my [b:The Alexandria Quartet|13033|The Alexandria Quartet (The Alexandria Quartet #1-4)|Lawrence Durrell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388292278l/13033._SY75_.jpg|4003808] vibes. Barnes like Durrell can capture the humanity of freaks and outcasts. She can disturb you and seduce you at the same time. I can see veins of Nightwood web through the later novels by Patricia Highsmith. As a CIS white male, reading books like Nightwood are useful. They give me a glimpse or shade of an experience that is completely foreign to mine. But, I'm not sure how far to extend that because at times, reading Nightwood felt like I was traveling through a nightmare drunk. I was disoriented, disturbed, and on shifting literary sand. But I have rarely read something that felt more like a trip.
- Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
I listened to this novel one night as I drove from Phoenix to Las Vegas. It was ominously dark, beautiful and creepy. I guess that equally applies to the book as to the drive. Art exists when something can be both creepy and beautiful at the same time. This isn't David Lynch, but I can imagine few other directors directing this book into a movie. Nightwood also gave my [b:The Alexandria Quartet|13033|The Alexandria Quartet (The Alexandria Quartet #1-4)|Lawrence Durrell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388292278l/13033._SY75_.jpg|4003808] vibes. Barnes like Durrell can capture the humanity of freaks and outcasts. She can disturb you and seduce you at the same time. I can see veins of Nightwood web through the later novels by Patricia Highsmith. As a CIS white male, reading books like Nightwood are useful. They give me a glimpse or shade of an experience that is completely foreign to mine. But, I'm not sure how far to extend that because at times, reading Nightwood felt like I was traveling through a nightmare drunk. I was disoriented, disturbed, and on shifting literary sand. But I have rarely read something that felt more like a trip.
benjaminharrisonofficial's review
5.0
My god, to write like this! Prose is too dusty a word, poetry too dull, but then labelling anything is fairly boring anyway, huh. So maybe I didn't understand this like I would, say, any given Stephen King novel, but that's almost beside the point I feel. Sentences such as these could sustain me on a desert island for years.
bibliocyclist's review
3.0
The way she said "dinner" and the way she said "champagne" gave meat and liquid their exact difference, as if by having surmounted two mediums, earth and air, her talent, running forward, achieved all others.
Youth is cause, effect is age.
Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them.
The sleeper is the proprietor of an unknown land.
An image is a stop the mind makes between uncertainties.
None of us suffers as much as we should, or loves as much as we say. Love is the first lie; wisdom the last.
Youth is cause, effect is age.
Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them.
The sleeper is the proprietor of an unknown land.
An image is a stop the mind makes between uncertainties.
None of us suffers as much as we should, or loves as much as we say. Love is the first lie; wisdom the last.